Basic Trope: A rapier is the mark of a sophisticated or classy person.
- Straight: Rodolfo is the son of a count, a patron of the arts and sciences, and wears a rapier constantly at his side. He practices with an expensive fencing master, and has defended his honor in many duels.
- Exaggerated: Rodolfo is The Emperor of multiple countries, with Blue Blood going back a thousand years, and the hilt of his rapier is solid gold set with diamonds.
- Downplayed: Rodolfo wears a rapier, and can mingle with the upper class, but he's liable to be unable to stand them if he's around them for too long and will act out when he does. Most of the upper class consider him sufficiently sophisticated, but the few that hang around him long enough will inevitably consider him a boor.
- Justified:
- Rapiers are part of the official dress code at court. You'd look like a bumpkin if you didn't have one at your side.
- Rodolfo's father is a fencing master to the nobility. Of course he'd learn how to use one.
- An official edict makes it unlawful for anyone not of noble birth to wear the rapier as a sign of status.
- Inverted:
- Rodolfo's rival Clarke is an uncultured ruffian, and he favors a short, broad-bladed falchion.
- Rapiers are the weapons of choice for thugs and criminals, and no self-respecting noble would ever use one.
- Subverted: Rodolfo seems to be a rapier-wearing gentleman, but he's actually a poor criminal who stole that rapier and suit of clothes from someone else. He lacks the grace and manners to actually pass for a nobleman, and couldn't wield a rapier properly to save his life.
- Double Subverted:
- Rodolfo is actually a down-on-his luck aristocrat who has been forced to live among peasants, and has merely gotten rusty with his manners and sword skills. After he spends a few minutes wearing his new clothes and trying out the sword, his old élan comes back to him.
- Lovable Rogue Rodolfo is not the nobleman he pretends to be, but even after this is revealed, he is a noble man, and fighting on the streets has given him a legitimate skill with the blade.
- Parodied: Rodolfo and his upper-class friends spend an entire ball comparing notes about rapier styles, and refuse to even talk to a newcomer whose rapier is two days out of fashion.
- Zig Zagged: Rodolfo is an aristocratic man that wears a rapier and is well-inclined to art, sciences and court politics, except he's actually very poor and makes up with how he's very good at secretly looking and listening in on all the artistic, scientific and political stuff he likes. When he loses his rapier, he loses his ability to keep his passion for noble activities and quickly loses his veneer of class. When he gets it back, he gets straight back into his old passions...and then when another nobleman of a similar persuasion talks to him about all of that, it turns out Rodolfo really doesn't get any of it and just truly believes he does.
- Averted: Despite his genteel upbringing, Rodolfo does not like these new-fangled rapiers, and prefers the good old knightly sword his grandfather left him.
- Enforced: "This princess character is supposed to be elegant, and viewers won't believe that she can handle a big, heavy sword. We need to give her a rapier!"
- Lampshaded: "As you can tell by my sword's rapier-style, I am a man of refinement and class."
- Invoked: Rodolfo's a fellow whose just come into wealth, and he wishes to become a sophisticated gentleman that befits his means...so he reasons the first thing he should do it buy and train with a rapier.
- Exploited: Peasant rebels plot to kidnap some nobles during an open-air festival, and identify their targets based on who's wearing a rapier.
- Defied: Rodolfo's father writes a pamphlet fulminating against the fashion for the rapier among the nobility, and how it's destroying polite society.
- Discussed: "A gentleman who cannot use his rapier is no gentleman at all."
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: The coat room in the palace where the noble government meets has pegs on the wall for hanging up one's sword.
- Deconstructed: The nobility is so attached to their flimsy dueling rapiers that they wield them in battle against heavily armored enemy cavalry, causing a humiliating defeat.
- Rodolfo is used to defending his honor; when he has to defend his life against Faye, an assassin, he does not survive.
- Reconstructed: Rodolfo proposes that they use swords that mate sturdier blades with rapier-style hilts, satisfying the needs of fashion while restoring their usefulness in battle.
- Played For Laughs: Rodolfo buys the latest rapier style in his eagerness to demonstrate his wealth and taste, which is so long that he cannot even get it out of the scabbard.
- Played For Drama: The nobility is obsessed with its honor, and numerous aristocrats die every week in pointless rapier duels.
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